Social Media Is Not For Everyone

Every client project I work on right now has clients asking me things like: should I be using social media? Which platform should I go with? How will I reach the most people? Should I invest in advertising on social media? It’s 2016, everyone is on social media, I need to be too, right?

Well, no.

The first thing I tell people right off the bat is this: Don’t bother with social media if you aren’t going to use it. It is not for everyone!

By ‘use it’ I don’t mean posting occasional notices about a sale you have going on or a special event. Posting once-in-a-while or just when you happen to remember isn’t going to help you. It’s just going to be a waste of your time.

If you’re going to use social media marketing for your business, you need to take the time to get to know the platform you’re using, get to know some of the other people using it, and reach out and make connections with those people. It’s called social media for a reason. It’s meant to be a two-way conversation.

Now, this doesn’t mean you have to spend hours every day on this, but it does mean you have to pay attention to it and be consistent. Daily or almost daily use is a requirement, even if you’re only spending a short amount of time tweeting/posting/pinning/etc.

If you’re already using social media and feel like using it to promote your business would be pretty easy, then yes, by all means, go right ahead!

But if the idea of finding the time and resources to properly use it feels like pulling teeth, don’t bother. It doesn’t matter that it’s 2016. Focus your attention on your website and on building connections with people in ways that feel authentic to you, and you’ll go a heck of a lot further with it. After all, word of mouth is the single most important way to grow your business. Always has been. Probably always will be. And word of mouth works just as well through email, text, and in person interactions as it does over social media.

And hey, don’t just take my word for it! Alexandra Franzen, professional writer and super smart person, wrote about this exact topic last year. Did leaving social media hurt her business? Not at all.

Do what’s right for you and your business, not what a bunch of other people are telling you to do.